One Room, No View
by Storm Seller
Summary: Wilson's hurt, but it's House who unexpectedly finds healing. Friendship or slash. Written for the Literary Drabble Challenge. Kinda got away from me, so I'm hoping flash fiction will count. Prompt: "My grandmother's guilt lasted a lifetime"  Babyface
1. Chapter 1

**One Room, No View.**

Author: Storm

Characters: House, Wilson, Mrs. Wilson, Oma House.

Rating: PG

Summary: Wilson's hurt, but it's House who unexpectedly finds healing.

A/N: Written for the Literary Drabble Challenge. Kinda got away from me, so I'm hoping flash fiction will count ;) Prompt: "My grandmother's guilt lasted a lifetime" (_Babyface_, 77).

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><p><em>Clank-clank, clank-clank<em>. Long grey needles flash, knitting and pearling. He's woken to this dozens of times: gnarled hands spooling wool, rheumy eyes intently peering, emotions buried in mounds of wrinkles. Oma used to rock herself in the old chair on the porch. If Greg slept at all, he'd wake at the thud of his father's heavy boots departing for the training barracks. The creak of her rockers on the planks would let him know it was time to crawl out, to brush off the spiders and the dirt and return to the house again, wash himself and dress in normality, go off to school. His mother, working night shifts as a nurse at the barracks hospital, was none the wiser.

Wilson's mother knits in the spare chair House himself had dragged into her son's room. A pair of socks has become a scarf, a sleeve, the beginnings of a sweater. Still the respirator rasps, the IV lines drip, the lines on the monitor steadily zig and zag.

_They cornered him in an alley, hurrying back to the hospital from the bar, after the civil ceremony._

It wasn't even his. House thumps his book down on the bedside cabinet, punches the button on the monitor, glares at the unchanging readings on the printout. He pitches it into the bin to join the flowers sent by the two oncology nurses from their Caribbean honeymoon.

Wilson's mother watches him until he subsides into the pillows again, reclaims his grip on Wilson's limp hand. The momentary hope fades from her eyes and she holds up her project, stares over the collar that is taking shape at the bed. He says, before he can stop himself:

"Blue isn't his colour."

Withered lips soften into a reproving smile.

"It isn't _for_ him, Greg," she says gently. "There aren't any magical healing powers in a sweater. You've strong-armed the best doctors in the world into taking care of him. You're here all night, every night, twice an hour every day. There isn't a wall in the room that hasn't got a differential scrawled all over it; if he's silly enough to wake up in a moment that you're not here, he'll know that you were."

If they were sat nearer, she'd pat his cheek, House realises. Instead, her smile grows fonder.

"You know what the first thing he's going to ask _me_ is? Who was looking after _you_?'

House could do with the respirator for a moment himself. He can't breathe, can't think. He hopes his own new collection of wrinkles will hide the strange urges to smile and to cry. He finds he wants to believe in religion: to hope that, if those in heaven get to look down, those in hell have to look up. Wilson's mom might be wrong about there being no such thing as sartorial wizardry. Her needles resume again: _clank-clank, clank-clank._

[End].


	2. Chapter 2

**Room in Review**

Author: Storm

Rating: PG

Characters: House, Wilson.

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Greg House. Including his creators. And theirs.

Summary: Companion piece to **One Room, No View.**

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><p>Spiderwebs. Fracture lines. Dark on white. Rectangular outline. Intermittent light. Too bright. X-rays: the pieces of a shattered skull. A broken window. Crash. Pain. Blackness.<p>

Light again. Snakes. No, scribbles. A tube map. Evening alleyways. Crash. Pain. Blackness.

Black on white. Whitewash. Wall. Crash. Pain... More light.

Writing. Indecipherable. Familiar.

A diagnosis. He squints to read it. CJD. Mad cow? The darkness comes again.

Patches. Dairy cattle? Chessboard. Vertical. Painted on a wall. Children's stickers instead of faces. Ring of faces. Fists. Crash. Pain. Blackness.

A mad cow. A chessboard. A heart monitor and a set of knitting needles resting on a grey chair. Vague memories of green cocktails. What could all these have in common?

It sounds like the start of a joke.

His brain catches on a second after his tongue.

"House."

Long fingers curl around his, play over them like piano keys, test the slow answering clasp of his hand, as if – finally – careful retuning has restored a favourite instrument to health.

"You done trying to rid the city of evil, Batman?"

Batman? Wilson swallows dryly, tries to tug some semblance of thought out of the cracks in his consciousness.

"Aren't I Robin?"

A not-quite suppressed sigh of relief.

"Nah." The bed shifts as an extra weight lurches onto it. "You got upgraded for your mad skills in solo crime fighting."

Shutters...no, his eyelids...try to close, dark, light, dark, light... He blinks, catches a glimpse of brilliant, worried, red-rimmed eyes and a bright blue sweater. With a red and yellow Superman logo knitted onto the chest.

He laughs, coughs, winces, and gasps. A plastic cup of water is brought to his lips. He sips, grateful both for that and the quick click-click of a morphine button being reactivated. Once he can speak again, he murmurs:

"You've been adopted by my mother, haven't you?"

In some way he can't quantify, House's smile tastes a little less broken than usual as he presses it against Wilson's lips.

The darkness comes again, but softly.

[End].


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